Nothing is more maddening than hearing teams debate whether a certain idea is applicable in a business-to-business or business-to-consumer engagement. In the end, we’re all in the same business: people to people. None of us sell to companies; we deal with the people (consumers) inside these companies, who have the same motivations, challenges, and emotions as any other person.

The research shows that effective perspective-taking, attuning yourself with others, hinges on three principles.

1. Increase your power by reducing it…

As the researchers conclude, “power leads individuals to anchor too heavily on their own vantage point, insufficiently adjusting to others’ perspective.”

The results of these studies, part of a larger body of research, point to a single conclusion: an inverse relationship between power and perspective-taking. Power can move you off the proper position on the dial and scramble the signals you receive, distorting clear messages and obscuring more subtle ones…

2. Use your head as much as your heart…

Perspective-taking is a cognitive capacity; it’s mostly about thinking. Empathy is an emotional response; it’s mostly about feeling. Both are crucial…

This second principle of attunement also means recognizing that individuals don’t exist as atomistic units, disconnected from groups, situations, and contexts. And that requires training one’s perspective-taking powers not only on people themselves but also on their relationships and connections to others…

3. Mimic strategically…

People therefore looked to cues in the environment to determine whom they could trust. “One of those cues is the unconscious awareness of whether we are in synch with other people, and a way to do that is to match their behavioral patterns with our own.” Synching our mannerisms and vocal patterns to someone else so that we both understand and can be understood is fundamental to attunement…

The key is to be strategic and human—to be strategic by being human.

Similarity—the genuine, not the manufactured, variety—is a key form of human connection.

We don’t always realize it, but what we do and how we do it are themselves pitches. We’re conveying a message about ourselves, our work, or our organization—and other people are interpreting it.

Take some time to find out what they think you’re saying. Recruit ten people—a combination of coworkers and friends and family. Then ask them which three words come to mind in response to one of these questions: What is my company about? What is my product or service about? What am I about? Make it clear that you’re not asking them for physical qualities (“tall, dark, and handsome”) but something deeper.

Once you gather these words, look for patterns. Many people are surprised by the disconnect between what they think they’re conveying and what others are actually hearing. Knowing is the prelude to improving.

Every circumstance in which we try to move others by definition involves another human being. Yet in the name of professionalism, we often neglect the human element and adopt a stance that’s abstract and distant. Instead, we should recalibrate our approach so that it’s concrete and personal—and not for softhearted reasons but for hardheaded ones.